our construction has brought us to such a position that we must resort not only to such unpleasant things as leasing, but also to such an unpleasant business as trade. One could have expected that such an unpleasant situation would give rise to both despondency and loss of morale. But who is to blame here? Is not the one in whom we observe this loss of morale, this despondency, to blame? If the economic reality into which we have fallen thanks to the totality of conditions of economics and politics, international and Russian—if it is such that monetary circulation has become a fact rather than commodity exchange; if we must direct our task toward regulating the present trade, the present poor monetary circulation—then what shall we say, we communists, that we have nothing to do with this? That would be the most harmful despondency, a completely desperate attitude, and would make all work impossible.

The circumstances in which we conduct our work are created not only by us: they depend also on economic struggle and on relations with other countries. These results have developed in such a way that this spring of the current year we raised the question of leasing, but now we must raise the question of trade and monetary circulation as well. To brush this aside with the remark that "they didn't teach us trading in prisons"—means to succumb to inadmissible despondency, means to fail to fulfill our economic task. It would be much more pleasant if we could take capitalist trade by storm, and under certain conditions (undestroyed factories, high economy and culture) in the attempt at "storm," that is, at direct establishment of commodity exchange, there is no error whatsoever. But now the error consists precisely in the fact that we do not wish to understand the necessity and inevitability of a different approach. This is not an invented error, this is not an error from the realm of history—this is a lesson for correct understanding of what can and must be done now. Can the party successfully resolve its task if it approaches it with the reasoning: "We weren't taught to trade in prisons, we don't need commercial accounting"? Much that we were not taught

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in prisons we have been forced to learn after the revolution, and we have learned and learned very successfully.

I think that to learn to understand commercial relations and trade is our obligation, and we will begin to learn successfully and will learn when we begin to speak of this task without evasion. We have had to retreat so far that the question of trade has become a practical question for the party, a question of economic construction. What determines the transition to commercial principles? The surrounding circumstances, the present conditions. It is necessary so that large industry might be rapidly restored and rapidly linked with agriculture, so that proper commodity exchange might result. In a country with more developed industry all this would happen much more quickly; for us it proceeds by a roundabout and protracted path, but in the end, what we strive toward will be achieved. And now we must be guided by those tasks which today and tomorrow set before us, before our party, which must direct all state economy. Now we can no longer speak of commodity exchange, because it, as a field of struggle, has been knocked from our hands. This is an indubitable fact, however unpleasant it may be to us. What, then—must we say that we have nothing more to do? Not at all. We must learn. We must learn state regulation of commercial relations—a difficult task, but there is nothing impossible in it. And we will solve this task, because we have solved tasks no less new, necessary, and difficult for us. Cooperative trade—a difficult task, but there is nothing impossible in it; one need only understand it clearly and work seriously. To this our new policy reduces itself. At present, a small number of enterprises have already been transferred to commercial accounting, payment of labor in them is conducted at prices of the free market, settlements have shifted to gold. But the number of such economic units is insignificant; in the majority, meanwhile, chaos prevails, complete discrepancy between wages and conditions of existence; some enterprises have been removed from the state—

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